Sara McCoy MD, PhD

Research Description:

Dr. McCoy is a rheumatologist with a laboratory focused on understanding the immunopathology driving dryness to improve diagnostics and treatment. She currently studies inflammatory/autoimmune diseases (e.g., Sjögren’s disease) and destructive processes (radiation) that drive xerostomia. She is defining salivary gland mesenchymal stromal cell immunobiology with the goal of developing mesenchymal stromal cell (MSC) focused therapeutics fir dryness. Her lab has found that local salivary gland inflammation drives a maladaptive immune response from salivary gland MSCs. This maladaptive response might promote local lymphocyte chemotaxis into tissue and allow MSCs to act as antigen presenting cells. Her lab crosses the translational spectrum and we recently received an FDA IND to treat xerostomia from Sjögren’s disease and graft-versus-host disease with bone marrow derived mesenchymal stromal cells. She moves across the spectrum from research at the bench to therapeutics, never losing site of her goal to improve patient quality of life through research. Her lab is funded by NIH NIDCR, the UW Cancer Center, and the University of Wisconsin.

Selected References: 

McCoy SS, Parker M, Gurevic I, Das R, Pennati A, Galipeau J. Ruxolitinib inhibits IFNγ-stimulated Sjögren’s salivary gland MSC HLA-DR expression and chemokine-dependent T cell migration. Rheumatology (Oxford). 2022 Oct 6;61(10):4207-4218. doi: 10.1093/rheumatology/keac111. PubMed PMID: 35218354; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC9536796.

McCoy SS, Giri J, Das R, Paul PK, Pennati A, Parker M, Liang Y, Galipeau J. Minor salivary gland mesenchymal stromal cells derived from patients with Sjӧgren’s syndrome deploy intact immune plasticity. Cytotherapy. 2021 Apr;23(4):301-310. doi: 10.1016/j.jcyt.2020.09.008. Epub 2020 Nov 28. PubMed PMID: 33262072; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC8728747.